“I loved it,” White said. “I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, this was my era.”

McCartney cited a boy peeping out from under his mother’s clear rain coat as they rush through wet weather by Amos Sewell as her favorite piece.

“I think we’ve lost our filters,” McCartney said. “I don’t see any four-letter words being exhibited in these paintings.”

In the past, she said, people didn’t use four-letters words in public places like a store. They didn’t talk about things “you shouldn’t discuss in public.”

“You put your best foot forward whenever you went out in public,” White said. “I see the family unit in all of these (pieces). It wasn’t as fractured as it is now.”

Johnson’s favorite piece was an original Rockwell pencil sketch showing a father and a son waiting on a bench. The teenaged son appears to be setting off to college as a sad-eyed dog rests his head on the boys leg.

“It brought back a lot of memories of how life used to be,” White said, “and expectations of how people were supposed to behave.”

The women pointed out how both men were dressed in formal attire.

“Now days they come to church in their shorts, and I don’t like it,” McCartney said. “It brings back memories from when I was young and life was simple.”

Johnson noticed the emotion in the drawing of the teen going to college.

“I like you can see the hope in his eyes,” she said. “He is excited about what his future is going to be.”

The women were undecided on whether was eager to send his son to college, or doubted the need for it since he probably didn’t go to college himself.

They did reach on consensus on one thing though — students in Lubbock receive a good education in the arts.

“I feel we’re lucky in the Lubbock district,” White said. “We have kept the arts and many other districts have not.”

McCartney called art education an outlet for expression. Johnson believes it is important for students who don’t excel in other areas.

“Not all students are strong academically,” Johnson said. “They need a way to feel successful.”

White said there are lessons everyone can learn from the artwork.

“Everyone should get off the ‘me train’ just a little,” she said.

And a train is actually a part of her favorite cover art. The piece is comprised of three panels showing a station before a train speeds through, while the train is speeding through and, finally, the station after the train has passed through. White pointed out a steady figure in each panel is the figure of a soldier, and which she viewed as the steady assurance of the armed forces.

However, White said, younger people might get a different message and view the collection differently.

Jamie Price, who visited the museum with her husband and child, viewed the collection in a different light.

“This represents a small fraction of the U.S. population,” Jamie said. “It leaves out a plethora of people who are different.”

Jamie said the collection features more wholesome cover art than what is typically seen on news stands today.

“It is very easy to idealize this time, especially with paintings like these,” Price said, “and say it would be good to return to that era.”

However, she suggested it was far from an ideal time for women, gays and people of non-European decent.

As a stay at home mother and artist, she has an appreciation for the art work.

“I always like to see original work,” she said.

Her husband, Trent, also questioned the ideals presented on the covers.

“It is often a beautiful picture,” he said of the covers. “But, it feels idealistic rather than what life was really like.”

That said, he is impressed by the amount of work the artists put into their creations.

“It is important for my generation and younger to see that,” Trent said. “It took so much more work than it does now.”